Crafting: Gourmand Gratifier

Most of my "spare" time in the game over the past two months has been focused on increasing Qiara's cooking skills, building up Guild Points for Qiara, and raising Kiki's fishing skills. And hopefully make some gil in the process.

All of the coeurl subs that Qiara had made had finally sold off, so I moved her on to Tavnazian Salad and Flounder Meuniere to get her to 92 and 93, respectively. The salads were handy for making lots of tacos, both for sale and for Kiki. The Flounder Meuniere sell for a handsome profit, but they sell so rarely, it's not really worth putting them up on the AH. I sold a lot of them to NPCs for a smaller profit, to get some grocery money back for Quiznos, but since they can also turn up as Guild Point items, I've hung on to quite a few. Qiara had the ingredients on hand for a few tonosama rice balls, so she did 3 synths and got the .1 she need to push her to 93.

Next up was Black Curry, which caps at 94. Kiki had to do a bunch of ferry fishing to get the tuna Qiara needed, and got some noble ladies in the process. I also needed Grimmonites from Sea Serpent Grotto, which got me Bastore Bream and Nebimonites as well. Black Curry sells for a pretty good price, but it's quite slow unless it's that day's Guild Point item. I opted to sell a lot of them rather than save for Qiara's GP, since it's a poor gil/GP ratio.

One time when I was fishing on the ferry, Silverhook came along, with no WHMs camping for him. I decided to attack him (as PLD75/BLM35), but didn't buff up or switch out of my fishing gear first. That was kind of dumb, so I warped out before he killed me.

Fishing skillups have been reasonable, though really random. One day Kiki got 1.1 skill ups on fewer than 24 black sole catches, but then caught another two stacks without a single skillup. Kiki's at 73.5 now, and that should continue to increase as I need to have her catching Grimmonites and Black Sole on a regular basis, both for her own foods (Pescatora and Tavnazian Tacos mostly) and for selling as well.

Since Qiara got to 94, I've been having her make Rice Dumplings, which cap at 95. These also require Woodworking Level 15, so Qiara switched her focus to woodworking for a few days. She made lauan lumber, maple wands, workbenches, ash lumber, ash wands, and ash staves to get to 10, all while still in Windurst, with cheap wood available from NPCs. I typically would desynth all the items until the materials vanished, but the skill up rate on the desynths was worth it.

Qiara had to travel to San d'Oria to pass the exam at the guild, so I switched her to THF1 and walked there, taking the ferry from Mhaura to Selbina. I always enjoy the level 1 runs like that, but I was wishing I'd brought along prism powders in a couple of spots, just to save some time instead of waiting until I could safely get her past groups of goblins. Once she passed the test, she stayed in San d'Oria until she hit level 15, making mostly willow lumber, willow wands, and crossbow bolts of various types.

Another thing I need for Rice Dumplings is a steady supply of Coral Fungus. This is pretty easy to grow from Grain Seeds, so I had Kiki farming for them in La Thiene a couple times. This prompted my husband to remark that one can get a lot of Grain Seeds from harvesting, and that I'd need lots of fresh mugwort from 95 to 99 as it was. So I decided to have Grymalkyn start working as a harvester. She has lots of inventory space, and wouldn't get any aggro in Giddeus, plus she has clothcraft at 53 and can turn a lot of the raw harvesting materials into more salable goods. It made perfect sense, and my husband didn't seem to get mad at me for using poor Grymalkyn in that way, so all is good. I sent her the harvesting gear, had her buy stacks of sickles, and sent her off to Giddeus as a BST60/BLM22. She now stays there until her pockets are full, then heads back to Windurst to process/sell/distribute items as needed, then back off to Giddeus she goes.

Ohrly's been trying to grow Coral Fungus from the grain seeds, and gets quite a bit of Tarutaru rice in the process. This is always handy, since I tend to make/use/sell a lot of sushi, but more Coral Fungus would be nice too. Qiara is slowly making rice dumplings when she has the ingredients, but it will take me awhile to get her the last few points needed to hit 95. After that, it'll be years of Sweet Rice Cakes to take her to 99. I'm not sure I'll be able to get that last point to 100 though, unless I luck into a steady supply of dragon meat. :-)

In the meantime, I've been having Qiara turn in items for guild points when items are really cheap/easy to get, or if I have them on hand already, or have time to have her make them. The first 70,000 for her Chef's Hat didn't seem to take so long, and she got that just over a week ago. The 100,000 I need to her Chef's Apron seems to be a lot more daunting for some reason.